Don’t Panic But Ben Affleck Totally Predicted The Future In A 2003 Interview

Ben Affleck circa 2003: May have had access to a time machine, we’re not sure.Source:reutersSource:Whimn

Ben Affleck is a man of many talents. It’s no secret that he’s an accomplished writer (Good Will Hunting), director (Argo), and actor (Reindeer Games), but it turns out that Affleck has another hidden talent — as a psychic.

Twitter user John Backus has been doing a deep dive on the history of file-sharing and found a 2003 interview in which Ben Affleck seemed to predict the rise of Spotify and Netflix.

During a conversation about file-sharing, Affleck noted how the industry had been too slow to embrace and adopt the latest paradigms and how shareware (Napster) introduced the public to the concept of file-sharing. Affleck’s economical assessment of the music industry was spot on, but he also had some prescient thoughts regarding movie streaming.

Ben Affleck is off the market. Photo: GettySource:Whimn

“I think an annual subscription-based system is one that works,” Affleck, a possible wizard, said. “It’ll be movies on demand, but it’ll be a tiered structure. Like if you want to watch it first weekend, maybe it won’t be available first weekend. But then if you want to watch it, you’ll pay more. And then as it goes to another stage in its release, it’ll become less expensive. But there’s a lot more adoption that has to happen, technologically speaking, right now before people can watch movies, or at least integrate it in terms of a PC or web connection.

“The technology’s not quite there yet, but it will be within, I’d say, five years.”

Almost exactly right about the unit economics of annual music subscriptions and the timing of online movie streaming. Solid point too on how shareware (Napster) is a necessary predecessor pic.twitter.com/mpEgRPK4zL